VS Code: a pending permission prompt blocks the input box, forcing an immediate context switch

What happens

In the VS Code extension, while I am typing a message in the Claude input box, a permission prompt appears. From that moment I cannot continue typing - the input box is blocked until every pending question has been answered.

If several tool calls are queued, several prompts stack up, and I have to clear all of them before I can type another character.

Why it matters

To be clear: the typed text is not lost. That is not the problem. The problem is the forced interruption.

I am mid-thought, composing an instruction. The extension makes answering an unrelated question a precondition for continuing that thought. So I have to stop, read the permission request, decide on it, and then go back and re-read my own half-written message to work out where I was and what I still meant to say.

The interruption itself also makes recovery harder: being pulled out of a sentence against my will is irritating, and irritation makes it measurably harder to drop back into concentration. So the cost is not the two seconds spent answering the prompt - it is the concentration lost and the effort of rebuilding it, every single time.

It also inverts the priority. The permission decision is almost always the less urgent of the two: the tool call is already waiting and will keep waiting indefinitely. The thing with momentum is what I was typing.

Expected behaviour

A pending prompt should not gate composing. Any of these would resolve it:

• Let the input box keep accepting text while prompts are pending, and answer them when I choose to.
• Queue prompts and surface them non-blockingly rather than as a modal gate on input.
• At minimum, allow a pending prompt to be deferred or collapsed so typing can continue.

Relationship to existing issues

Distinct from both of these, though they compound each other:

• #32726 - the panel stealing focus when producing output. That is about focus being taken; this is about input being blocked even when you are already in the right place.
• #75360 - typed input being destroyed by the dialog. Again: nothing is destroyed here.

This one is specifically: prompt pending => cannot type => forced to handle the prompt before finishing the thought.

Environment

Claude Code 2.1.217, VS Code 1.130.0.